On the brink

We are in the crucible of history now and the molten force of this moment will cast the template for the form of government that we will live with for another generation, at least. This is it. The unimaginable political apocalypse of a triumphant right-wing one-party authoritarian state that was the stuff of liberal nightmares for the past generation is now here and present. 

The Republican Party abandoned the concept of democracy as the prime directive many decades back. The modern Republican Party, starting with Newt Gingrich and his Contract on America in the ‘90s, during the Clinton Administration, has fully embraced the total warfare, slash-and-burn strategy for electoral politics, seeking to permanently disable their political opposition and end the cycle of transfer of power once and for all. Newt Gingrich envisioned Republican majorities “as far as the eye can see.”  

Donald Trump emerged from the fetid swamp of a long series of debased generations of Republican leadership. Gingrich, who rose to Speaker of the House on the basis of his right-wing oligarch-funded free media-training program for newly elected Freedom Caucus Republican Congressmen, directed freshmen Congressmen to repeat the same set of talking points any time a camera was shoved in their face: Democrats are un-American; Democrat cities are gang-infested hellholes; Democrats hate the troops; Democrats hate religion and God. Newt Gingrich was Patient Zero for the depravity of modern politics.  

We should not wonder where a Donald Trump came from. Lee Atwater did the dirty work for George H.W. Bush; Karl Rove carried the poisoned water for George W. Bush; the Republican base chose the King of the Birthers to follow two terms of Barack Obama. 

We will need a different social response to our peers, co-workers, and relatives who have supported this increasingly unhinged and immoral Republican Party for years. We will have to re-introduce biting social sanctions into American culture if we manage to survive this political coup attempt by Trump. Your Republican acquaintances salute this authoritarian claptrap without hesitation, like a dog reflexively obeying the alpha of the pack. In this case, the alpha male is a sick puppy, one Donald J. Trump. 

The people who supported this monstrosity will not be my personal friends. I will not attend their social functions and they will know why. Someone with these anti-social views is a risk to any company or agency that takes seriously the responsibility to maintain a healthy workspace. We have to have firm social sanctions and make them stick.

We must defeat, marginalize, and stigmatize the Republican Party and its members in any political, social, or cultural setting of significance. Cancel culture was not supposed to be about thinning our own ranks. We need to cancel the culture of the MAGA cult and its toxic ideology. It is necessary if we don’t want to live under martial law under President Tom Cotton in 2024.

On the local front, the hot issue is “Yes on Measure P,” which I wrote about previously as the Evelyn Cheatham Effective IOLERO Ordinance. Measure P would give the IOLERO access to the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office investigative evidence, the power to contact witnesses, and the power to subpoena records.

This bold action was spurred by public demand for civic accountability of law enforcement. We can win on Measure P.